Early departure to reality
by dr100
Summary: "Nothing's changed, except maybe a new haircut, & this fez I'm wearing…" The Doctor informs his companions there is but one last adventure planned for them, but then following a two month break, the Doctor returns. Set before 'The Impossible Astronaut'.
1. Chapter 1: Change in person

**Series 2: 'The Adventures of the Eleventh Doctor'**

**Doctor Who: **Episode Eight: **Early departure to reality**

**Starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, in the hit BBC Television Series, Doctor Who**

**Chapter One: ****Change in person**

**By Nathan Mullins**

* * *

><p><em>Aboard the TARDIS.<em>

"Doctor, It's been fun!" said Jack, bravely, knowing saying goodbye to one of his most forgiving friends was the hardest ever commitment he'd have to make.

"Captain Harkness, Sir, it's been a pleasure!" replied the Doctor, heartily, taking the man he'd known for so long now in his arms, then patting him on the back for the decision he had made was to leave.

Jack turned to River, and winked, and wagged his finger. "You're too naughty for me River Song, but should we ever meet in the Cabinet War Rooms again, lets grab a Dalek and have a mighty…"

_"-…moving on!"_ interrupted the Doctor. He smiled, winked, and turned his back on the Captain.

Jack took it swiftly, as he moved on to bid his farewells to Amy Pond, who Rory nudged up against, whispering to Jack - "She's taken!"

Amy held Jack's hand in hers, and kissed it. Jack turned to Rory, who at the time had been staring somewhat zombie like at the kiss of Jack's hand, and whose lips was thrust against Jacks in an urgent farewell and a laugh.

Rory took it miserably, staggering backwards, yelling - "eugh, that was vile!"

"No thanks, as always Rory my good man, but the pleasure was all mine anyway!"

Jack activated his vortex manipulator, turned to face the Doctor, who had asked him - "Where are you headed?"

"Earth, Cardiff, a bar where Alonzo has booked a bathroom, but I'm afraid the rest is top secret!"

In a flash, and a salute, Jack vanished.

The Doctor turned to River, Amy, and Rory, and smiled, loosely.

"He's a charming old man," he said, happily, now twiddling switches and turning levers left right and centre. "Old as in really old," he went on. "He's died so many times, walked in eternity so far, but for how much longer?"

River tried changing the subject, but the Doctor seemed pretty stuck. After a while, he in turn changed the subject.

"Right," he said, adjusting the time rotor, and setting coordinates. **"Onwards in time and space!"** he declared, and in instant, the wheezing of the console picked up in volume, and the TARDIS was again alive with shouts, shudders, and noise. Noise the Doctor lived for.

"Where are _we_ headed ourselves?" shrieked Amy, grabbing hold of the TARDIS for dear life.

_"Oh yes,"_ said the Doctor, eerily, _"-but its more a question of where am I headed, referring to you Amy, Rory, and River, for you see I'm leaving you all on Earth for this one adventure, this one time, because I've made plans you see."_

Suddenly, the tantrums of the TARDIS crew fell silent. Dead silent. A deathly silence that had the Doctor on tenterhooks.

"What do you mean Doctor?" asked River, hand on his shoulder, somewhat shocked to hear of his plans. "Are you in danger?" she continued.

"No, no, nothing quite so, well, _dangerous_, but there is an _element_ of danger. But trust me, please, for a while longer at least."

Amy and Rory stood huddled together by the entrance to the pool, and River was watching the Doctor from the balcony.

"So what's going on?" asked Amy, from below the console, to where the steps met her and her husband.

"We're leaving, said so myself, to the Brigadier if you hadn't heard correctly?"

"Got that," replied Amy, briskly. She crossed her arms. Rory sensed she wasn't a happy bunny.

"I can tell you aren't so impressed," said the Doctor, turning to stare down at her from beyond the steps. "Thing is Amy, your Doctor died, and now you're stuck with me."

"I got _that_, too," she muttered.

"Right," said the Doctor. "You think the memories you shared with me, I mean him, have vanished, are no more? Well they aren't you know! We are still the same Time Lord, and nothing's changed, except maybe a new haircut, and this fez I'm wearing…"

"I don't buy it," she muttered.

Rory smiled at the Doctor from afar, and he knew at least he put his trust in him.

"Where are _we_ off to then Doctor?" asked Rory.

**"The Abbey, we're late!"**

"So definitely Earth then?"

_"Well of course,"_ said the Doctor. _"Westminster Abbey, and the night before the day of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Expect sunshine and happiness!"_

"And why aren't you sticking around with us?" River continued to question him.

"I just said," the Doctor answered her, bluntly. "There are things that must be done. For you, River, this is your last adventure. For Amy and Rory, this is a holiday, because there is only darkness coming, for you, and for me. There are dark days to come, and my apparent death."

Amy and River exchanged glances. There was something sinister going on. They felt it, its presence. The Doctor felt it too. He saw his companions unblinking now full of fear and anxiety.

"I can't tell you anymore than just that," he explained. "But I'll be back to collect you all tomorrow, then its home for all of you," and Amy protested, as did River and Rory, on Amy's behalf, but the Doctor was firm, and nothing could be said to change his mind.

The TARDIS soon arrived at its destination. Amy and Rory skulked about the console room, in deep thought. River Song was in the pool, for her very last time. She was so deeply distressed by what the Doctor had said, his want for his companions to leave at once was something new.

"Come along!" called the Doctor, as he left the TARDIS. He held the door open for his companions, and they quickly joined him when they were ready.

"Its dark, isn't it?" asked Rory, a little cautious.

"Well I did say the _night_ before the day of the wedding, Rory," the Doctor mocked him.

They had landed in Parliament Square, and through the dark, the Horse Guards prepared for the day ahead. While they trotted on, the Doctor turned back to his companions who were left all a little curious.

"Where are we to stay the night?" asked Amy.

"Oh, I've booked you all into the Goring Hotel," the Doctor informed them.

"But when did you…?"

"A while ago," the Doctor cut in. "In preparation for where I'm heading, in time," the Doctor told them.

Suddenly, a car screeched to a halt beside the TARDIS. "Your _transport_," said the Doctor, strolling over to the driver who had wound his window down to talk with him. **"Hurry along,"** he called after them.

As their driver held the doors to their car open for them, the Doctor handed Amy his physic paper. _"This is yours, and take good care of it,"_ he whispered to her.

He shut the door after her, and the car sped off.

The Doctor waved them off, and then entered his ship. It began to de-materialise, and once it had, the Doctor set the coordinates for… He paused in thought, and then mused - _"Space, 1969, but before the storm, lets have the calm, wine, and trouble, why not?"_

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><p><strong>To be continued…<strong>


	2. Chapter 2: Running from something new

**Series 2: 'The Adventures of the Eleventh Doctor'**

**Doctor Who: **Episode Eight: **Early departure to reality**

**Starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, in the hit BBC Television Series, Doctor Who**

**Chapter Two: Running from something new**

**By Nathan Mullins**

* * *

><p>"Do you think he's alright, River? You know the Doctor better than any of us?" Amy asked her.<p>

"I don't know," she said. "He's behaving rather oddly, as if, well, him being a future version senses there's trouble to be had, yet he's running away from it, like he doesn't care."

"But why would he be running away from something when usually he confronts danger, puts an end to universal terrors?"

"Because…" River paused. "Perhaps this isn't your everyday universal terror. Maybe, this once, this issue involves the Doctor alone. It's his demon, his stalker. If he thinks he can outrun it, then its his prerogative."

"So, we've a wedding in the morning!"

Rory tried changing the subject in this somewhat jolly tone of voice, he always saved for something special, but this situation was nothing big, nothing exciting.

**"It's not ours!"** Amy retorted.

"I think what he means is, we've _something_ to celebrate!" exclaimed River.

"How can you think of anything else while the Doctor's running from something terrible, something perhaps is ready to kill him?" shouted Amy.

"He said _'this was our last adventure'_, Amy. I don't know what that means to you, but to me, it signifies a _whole load of things that he doesn't even know yet._ We must enjoy ourselves for whatever is going on in the Doctors life at present, is a dark secret he wants kept a secret. When he next sees us, we must say absolutely nothing. For now, we can only do as the Doctor asked us, and have fun!"

In their hotel, the three abandoned companions decided to take to the streets, the night before the big day.

"Where are we heading?" asked Rory, being led by the two women in his life, along the pavement from the hotel to nowhere in particular.

"A bar," said River, casually.

"What _type_ of bar?" mumbled Rory.

_"Spoilers,"_ teased River.

* * *

><p><em>The Doctor was running, always out of breath, and frequently tired. He hadn't slept in many days, and his hearts rates were decreasing. He was getting old. Too old to be running without some contraption to guide him, most notably his ship the TARDIS, which had now been taken from him and locked in a dungeon by King Henry the Eighth.<em>

_There was another time when he had been hunted down by the Dragon Lords on the Fire Gardens in the Dragon Castles, and escaped all but without his fez, in which had been burnt to cinders in the very last of his escapades._

_He had been caught in the bed of a fallen princess, an angel he had said he'd admired enough to trust with two hearts, an old TARDIS, which alerted the guards to his whereabouts after wheezing uncontrollably. And found drinking with the Emperor of Hoo while in the 40's hanging out with Frank Sinatra._

_There had been many occasions the Doctor was found to be enjoying himself, and least of all, worrying over something he didn't have a clue as to when, whatever it was, would strike._

* * *

><p><em>The day of the wedding.<em>

Got that physic paper Amy?" shouted River from the bathroom.

"Yeah," Amy called back, from the second bathroom. "Got that alrighty," she said, slurring her words a little.

"Still feeling the effects of last night?" River asked her.

"The effects of what?" Rory cut in, after having overheard while getting changed in the third bathroom down the corridor.

Their late night stroll had led the Ponds and Ms Song to a bar in the West End. Amy and River had ditched Rory to have some fun. Rory had been waiting in the hall of the bar River had told him was an old relic from her past, and for once not the Doctors. Jacks maybe. But Amy and River hadn't returned until they soon turned up back in the hotel not long after Rory himself got back, which had been at around 5.00am.

"It's the big day today," he said, a little loudly, to both annoy his wife and get in the party groove.

**"Grow up!"** Amy shouted back at him. "It may be a _big day_ for you, but what about the Doctor huh?"

"So I'm not granted some fun myself. Where did you two end up last night, eh? Has the kissogram returned to the scene?"

Amy Pond marched down the hallway, into the third on suite bathroom, and slapped her husband silly.

_"And that was for…?"_ muttered Rory.

**"Being an idiot!"** she retorted. "And for making jokes that aren't in the least funny!"

River turned the corner with a giant wig on. Amy and Rory burst out laughing.

"Not a good look in this day and age, River!" they chuckled.

River was dressed up as Cleopatra, again.

**"This isn't 102AD!"** stated Rory.

* * *

><p><em>Meanwhile, the Doctor, not the Doctor, but a doctor, was sending out invitations from a busy desk in a far off kingdom. Surrounding him, the bleak dark mist this was his first hand on experience of imprisonment, trapped and alone.<em>

_TARDIS blue envelopes, with numbers written on them. Addressed to the following: Those he knew so very well._

* * *

><p><span>After the wedding:<span>

"Where is he? Where's the Doctor? He said he'd be here!"

Amy didn't know what to think. Pushed into thinking he was well and he wished her only to party, was too far from the truth, as that statement always had been.

"Calm down Amy, there must be a logical explanation for this,"

"Yeah, there is," Amy snapped. "He's dead, and I told you so!"

"No," said River.

"Hang on," Rory shushed them.

"Leadworth, maybe?" he offered.

His suggestion made some sense. If he had meant to meet up with them at home, then them travelling to Leadworth and not finding them was another blow to Rory's relationship status, and him receiving another almighty slap from his wife.

And River had returned to her time, to locate him also, but that too had been a dead loss.

But in one months time, for all of them, having put the Doctor out of their minds was never going to be easy, and always a struggle. Television programmes with him hardwired into the system, a clip of him causing a stir at some event somewhere and in an old historic drama, or film, or news item. He was everywhere, even when he shouldn't be.

"He's **everywhere?"** exclaimed Amy. "Like he's trying to tell us something…"

_"Space, 1969... Approaches,"_ the Doctor whispered in the ear of his futuristic, past self. "The beginning of the end approaches!" and then the Doctor's past self dropped dead.

There was something going on, something too vast and complicated, even for the Doctor who stood mighty above the body of himself.

In an empty, dark room, thought to be the very last room in the building that didn't exist in real time, there lurked the body that played with time, while dead.

_"The mystery deepens,"_ the Doctor muttered.

* * *

><p><strong>To be continued…<strong>


	3. Chapter 3: Doctors past and present

**Series 2: 'The Adventures of the Eleventh Doctor'**

**Doctor Who: **Episode Eight: **Early departure to reality**

**Starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, in the hit BBC Television Series, Doctor Who**

**Chapter Three: Doctors past and present**

**By Nathan Mullins**

* * *

><p><em>The End of days:<em>

Draped back across his desk chair, there lurked a corpse thought nothing of, by anyone.

**"Remove it, then!"** ordered the staff, the bodies secretaries.

The undertakers refused to.

"What is it? Are you afraid?" the secretary snapped.

"I beg you see fit to excuse us, madam," pleaded those who had come to remove the corpse.

"Why should I, when it is your job to obey our commands?"

Suddenly, the undertakers screamed, as from behind the secretary, the corpse moved, its arm finding the will to rise from the now lifeless body shifting ever closer towards the woman barking commands. The corpses fingers twitched, clicked, and tightened in their grip of the woman who once worked for it.

The undertakers couldn't save her, but they were doomed as well. The woman had locked them in her employers office, and they were the next to die. Turning to face the corpse, as it lie, seemingly dead, they were mistaken when it did eventually walk. Proving them wrong, they too became as the corpse, once a lifeless forgotten body that had before seen better days.

* * *

><p><em>1541 and onwards<em> - Time Period.

"What did it matter?" the Doctor wondered, kneeling beside his own body. "What was I doing here, in this time?"

The Doctor heard footsteps approaching from beyond that of the locked door and he got up, back to the wall nearest to the door, pressing himself up against it, to hear if anything, a conversation.

"The Doctor… I must speak with him!"

"My lady, is this wise?"

Catherine Howard ordered her lady in waiting to unlock the door. She would wish to be alone with the Doctor, one of but few of her secret romances.

If it was not the King, it was Thomas Culpeper, and occasionally, an on the side fellow referred to as the Doctor, but quietly. Nobody except her knew of his existence in the grounds.

"I am afraid the door has been locked from on the inside, ma'am."

"Fetch the key, and _hurry now!_" Catherine whispered.

She saw her lady in waiting hurry away, and in her own efforts, she tugged at the door, but it refused to budge.

The voice of, the Doctor only imagined, was the Queens went silent. He crept back towards the body of himself, and sighed.

"What were you doing here, in this time period? Why are you now a dead man? _Why…?_" and he paused, turned the body on its front, and saw a strange liquid emerge from the dead mans mouth. **"Poisoned?** _An insider?"_ wondered the Doctor. "A possible relationship, with a Queen, never a good tale, so a quiet death. Nothing to inform the Kingdom of, but then… this is where it ends?"

The Doctor stood up, started frantically pulling things down. Things such as paintings lining the walls, chairs from carpets, carpets that might reveal something nasty, but by the end of it, nothing. A curtain was draped across one wall, and the Doctor didn't expect to find much, but the one thing he desired most of all. Behind that of the curtain, was his TARDIS. It was a dusty relic of days gone by, trapped alongside its dead occupant in a chamber in a castle of the Queens residence.

"Time to leave," said the Doctor. "Whatever I did, whatever I was meant to have done is wrong, and can't be real, unless…" he paused in the doorframe of his ship. "My imminent death is thus a poisoning I've just worked out in this time period? Which means the present me in which died in the company of the dark lords was a fake, or worse, the means to change my future…"

He entered his ship, and saw his companions, who turned to him, utterly shocked to find the man they had poisoned standing in the doorframe of his dying TARDIS.

**"AMY? RORY?"** he bellowed, not sure at first it was them.

_**"Doctor?"**_ Amy was gob smacked.

"But what are you doing here?" the Doctor asked them, puzzled.

He shut the doors to the TARDIS, and wandered up the steps to the console, leaning forward on the controls, smiling shaking his head.

_"This only gets worse,"_ he muttered.

_"You're telling us?"_ said Amy, in agreement. _**"-...When you asked us to poison you?"**_

The Doctor looked up at his _'so called friends'_, and grinned.

"Very well done then the pair of you. You did exactly as I asked you, which means the old me is now a future version of events. One left to meet in a time line I've no idea of in which he's obtainable. _This is the life we lead now, Amy, Rory._ **Time travel and love affairs, and of course the bits in between.** _Tell you what though…"_ he trailed off, his manic nature a stretch too far he thought. **"It's good to see you again!"** he mentioned to them, lastly.

* * *

><p><span>Trapped in a prison beyond the<span> _'End of Days'_.

Trapped and frightened, and shaking with fear _'it'_ was coming to get him, he scribbled his very last, when consumed by the Hunger.

The munching, the crunching of bones, the tear in his hearts, and the rips in his shredded flesh.

The Doctor, again, was dead, and there were but two left. Flapping in the breeze beside the body of the Time Lord, an envelope, with the number 5 scribbled on it.

This not only upset the balance of time, but left but one member less at the Doctors side the day the astronaut encountered him, in a future he had yet to experience, truthfully.

_For there were always four envelopes sent to the Doctors most trusted of associates, and never mind the fifth, the Doctor was expecting trouble._

* * *

><p><strong>To be continued…<strong>


	4. Chapter 4: Hurtful Memories

**Series 2: 'The Adventures of the Eleventh Doctor'**

**Doctor Who: **Episode Eight: **Early departure to reality**

**Starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, in the hit BBC Television Series, Doctor Who**

**Chapter Four: The Return of a hurtful memory**

**By Nathan Mullins**

* * *

><p>"River, where are you?"<p>

The Doctor was now able to communicate with River Song via the TARDIS audio dimension circuit.

"My world _sweetie_, and **WHERE** are you?" she responded, quirkily.

_"My world,"_ he growled back, saucily. "Get off your world, and meet me here pronto!" he shouted, demandingly, down the audio mike.

River shook her head, and grinned. She zapped herself to the Doctor in an instant second to that of their conversation.

"What is it now, and where did you go?" she asked him, as if she'd always been on board the TARDIS, and the Doctor stared at her just like she hadn't been anywhere else.

"I've just encountered another me, and another me somewhere has been very busy, and did I forget to mention another me is out there, and another? My guess is somebody's been hard at work, faking my previous existences. How? I'm not too sure, but first River, you can help me considerably."

River rolled her eyes, and sighed.

"What can I do for you this time?"

"That's the spirit!" shouted the Doctor racing beyond about the console delighted. "As I said, there are another two me's out there, and a possible third me, which we're off to visit immediately."

"And like how are we to do that? Isn't there a rule where meeting you two to three times can bring about the end of the world, like a paradox?" asked Amy.

"Well yes, in extreme cases, but this isn't," said the Doctor. "Now, I've hotwired the TARDIS with a little gadgetry, and two wires, which both hook up to my hearts. The device I've fixed to the eye of which is the second to belong in any TARDIS, and the first linked to Gallifrey…"

He paused, and then quickly continued. "It's going to find me, the TARDIS that is!" and then he set to work. He took of his jacket, rolled up his vest, and strapped himself up. He then cranked up the TARDIS. "Ready?" he asked his friends. "I suggest you hold on," he told them. "I've not done this sort of thing before," and then he switched on.

The TARDIS jumped, and suddenly there were two TARDIS console rooms, and pairs of the Doctor and his companions.

"Ah," he said. "Big mistake," he added. "There are two me's, not three, which would suggest he too, well me, is dead. So the TARDIS split in time and now there's two of us. Two of us to find the two other me's, and this is going to complicate things further, isn't it…?"

River was bored. She rushed over to the Doctor, and cranked down the TARDIS's heart rate. Suddenly, the TARDIS was as one again, and the Doctor was able to locate his other self. His third self, who had been half chewed up and spat out by a great beast. Resting by his side, the fifth envelope, that before the TARDIS arrived, was picked up by a human, and stuffed in their pocket.

* * *

><p><em><span>The Doctor remembers:<span>_

When the Doctor stepped out of his ship, and saw that of his body, the human had gone.

"Oh brilliant!" he exclaimed, furiously. "I knew he was a dead man, but this… is obscene," he moaned. "And there's a desk, and its dark, which tells me he was a prisoner, trapped and alone all the while. But not as alone as he most probably wished when he heard whatever monster dart forward, ready to…" he paused. For some reason, he could remember the attack, like it was a memory of his too. In a way, it was as he was connected to his past self at some stage in his future. This had taken place before he had met up with Amy and Rory, which suggested that yes, this wasn't real, but then why did the Doctor sense time was still running out.

Amy closed the eyes of the body of her friend. Rory comforted her as she wept.

"Hey, hey? Why are you crying, I'm alive, see, hair, eyes, head spinning in fear that I might not be for long!" stated the Doctor, as he had said before, alive.

"I know," mumbled Amy, - "But if this is a past you, then it so obviously happened!"

"Hmm…"

The Doctor didn't want to think about dying. He had so much left to offer the universe, and dying - not that he was afraid of death, was always constantly on his mind. Sometimes, he would look up into the sky, and ask the most feared question of all.

"When will you ever stop chasing me?"

Never.

Death was always there, always lingering ahead of him as if tempting him further and further into trouble. Trouble meaning danger, and that of which delighted him.

* * *

><p><em>River Song:<em>

River didn't know what she was doing, other than visiting the Doctor who wasn't her Doctor, who was with Amy and Rory, but another Doctor, whom she might have met and together been through the most hellish of moments.

She had entered 'the cell' of prison 49 on 'Heldered Imprisoned', by looking for a Doctor the Doctor present said he had already met when whispering in his ear, - "Space, 1969...approaches…"

Why had he sent her back in time to a Doctor he had already met. Was he not meant to be dead, by this point in his history.

She found the Doctor shining his boots in his cell, one boot atop of his old, wooden desk, the other resting on the concrete floor.

"Doctor?" she asked him, not sure he'd know her.

**"River bloody Song!"** he raved, getting up, wandering over to her, and kissed her between the bars in his cell.

"So you _know me_ then?" she asked him, again.

"Know you? Tell me," he said, - "Have we done the Grinning Triceratops on the planet Bone, where the fish rule inside out and the Triceratops, are, well… they shouldn't be there, should they?"

"Doctor, what's going on?" River interrupted him. He was babbling, about nonsense. Nonsence she had to no clue as to just what he was talking about.

"Right," he said, taking a seat, and leaning forward. "I imagine he's sent you, because you see, we met but briefly some time ago. It involves him…"

River took a seat from another inmates cell, and leaned in to have words with the Doctor, as confidential as possible, despite the cell splitting them up, and the other aliens listening in. The Doctor, who always kept himself to himself, had never been seen to discuss anything with anybody.

"Firstly," River whispered in the short pause. "You've met the Doctor?"

"When I was living," the Doctor answered her. "So, you're not living now?" she continued.

"That's a tricky one," said the Doctor. "Let's skip to who this involves!"

"Who does this involve, and why are there so many different versions of you?"

"It involves **BLACK**, who's back from the dead, looking to cause trouble, stir difficulties in my future history, you see, we destroyed him, but we all had to return, and we can't all return this time, because the last time, we had to make sure if such an eventuality ever occurred, only of present selves could deal with him, and this is it. He's a powerful force for evil. If he wants to destroy us, he'll go about it by destroying each second moment of who we are, as one Time Lord."

"But can you die here, I mean before the Doctor ever meets Amy and Rory again, I mean your companions, as you have travelled with them after your two month period away, as we have been doing?"

"Anything can happen between now and then," the Doctor answered her. He reached into his pocket, and plucked from within a sheet of paper. "See the Doctor gets this," he said.

"What is it?" asked River.

"Something he has to know. When you turn your back, look away, I will die. I was never speaking to you as a conscious Time Lord, but a memory of a clever dead man, who gave a video tape to the prison guards who left it running all this time to when you came looking for me, and eventually found me. Hurry now!" he told her.

River got up off her seat, but did not head off. She stood outside the Doctors cell, saw his body writhe and change until he suddenly became all but 2D, shifting and trembling, but only his image, until it altogether collapsed, and a tape appeared in his place on his chair in his cell.

River shrugged off.

Teleporting to the TARDIS, the Doctor's arms were crossed, and his expression telling. Rory and Amy stood beside him, too angered and upset.

River interrupted their silence.

"I was asked to present you with this," she said, handing the Doctor the scrap of paper. "I found out from your future self who is responsible."

"Oh, I know," the Doctor replied, much to the disbelief of his two friends at his side.

"You never said?" Amy asked him, angrily.

"Because Amy," his voice lowered, somewhat. "He is a very powerful entity, who I've encountered before, and now his return signifies the beginning of what might be the end for me!"

River turned back to the sheet of paper in the Doctor's hands.

"What does it say?" she asked him.

"Course coordinates," said the Doctor. "He must have found him, and thus his death became his punishment," the Doctor muttered, fiercely.

"So when we find him, he's gonna kill you?" Rory cut in, arm around Amy, for again, she had her head resting on his shoulder, sobbing.

"No, because I've been killed by him once, which means I'm already there. We're already there, and without the coordinates, he used us, as we're in his power.

The Doctor hurried to the door, and peered through the key hole. All but a blanket of white space stretched out from beyond that of the blue exterior.

In the white space, a black figure appeared, from waist height above, drifting in a mist that was difficult to see, through the key hole still.

"Come on," said the Doctor, to his three friends. "We've an audience with our control freak, Mr Ec Check Black!"

* * *

><p><strong>To be continued…<strong>


	5. Chapter 5: Escape and Death

**Series 2: 'The Adventures of the Eleventh Doctor'**

**Doctor Who: **Episode Eight: **Early departure to reality**

**Starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, in the hit BBC Television Series, Doctor Who**

**Chapter Five: Escape and Death**

**By Nathan Mullins**

* * *

><p>The Doctor was standing opposite that of his enemy, the dark Black, who on the Doctor's last comeuppance was fought until his very last breath.<p>

"Tell me _why?_" the Doctor shouted at the creature.

_**"Silence, Doctor!"**_ the creature shrieked, pointing with its ancient looking hand down at the Doctor whom fell to his knees before Black.

**"DOCTOR!"** yelled Amy, charging over to him, before also being forced to bow to her now immediate superior.

**"NO!"** shouted Rory. "You…"

_**"Silence!"**_ the creature snapped.

"Why have you returned?" the Doctor asked.

_**"To wreak my revenge on the Time lord who as before defeated me!"**_

"But why?" the Doctor persisted. "Why can't you see you were defeated because you were doing evil, and to tolerate evil is wrong?"

_**"Your evil, Doctor… is my good,"**_ the creature hissed.

"And what's your plan this time, eh?" called River, from the doorframe of the TARDIS.

_**"My plan, Ms Song, is to eliminate the Doctors past selves, faking his true existence. Here you see him, yes, but he is fading into time. The Doctor as you know him will die, soon!"**_

**"What? He can't!"** she insisted. _"We…"_

_**"The universe does not revolve around you Ms Song. Bow down to me, NOW!"**_

"So you've done what you had intended for me. I've travelled the universe, found myself, my dead counterparts. But there's something more to all this, and only I can see it…"

_**"What do you mean?"**_ grumbled Black.

"I'm a future version of the Doctor, and the old Doctor's dead. He supposedly died in the company of the Dark Lords, and his TARDIS was given up to the Silence, but what if the Doctor from the past didn't die? What if all this is a trap?"

_**"I control the time and space timelines which are in fact yours and the Time Lords Doctor. This is revenge!"**_

"So why aren't I dead yet, Black, because revenge shouldn't be taken with a pinch of salt. If you wanted me dead, you'd have done it long ago!"

_**"And I have, Doctor. Many of your other selves are dead. So WHAT DO YOU MEAN?"**_

"He means, EC, there are two of me," said a voice from out of nowhere.

Suddenly, the TARDIS light began to flash brightly, and it softly shook and vibrated, wheezed and shuddered.

Then, another familiar figure stepped out from within the TARDIS.

It was the Doctor.

"Hello Black, I'm the Doctor the Silence packed off in the time vortex. Whilst in space and time, I found the TARDIS, the TARDIS the Silence had expelled in space time. I found a device that locked on to me, and the TARDIS in turn locked on to your TARDIS, Doctor. Now, my other self is right in thinking something else is going on!"

_**"The ignorance of the Time Lords!"**_ Black roared. _**"You should be a dead man!"**_

"Well, I'm not, actually," the two Doctors replied. "And there's more going on than the death of me," the future Doctor snapped. "Now, I'm going to be truthfully blunt Doctor," said the Doctor Amy, Rory, and River were just getting used to. "Your death is coming, and it is I who suffers now, so run Doctor, whilst you can!" and then at once, the old Doctor, having just returned darted back towards the TARDIS, holding the door open for his companions who he saw were unable to join him.

"Let them go, Black, you wanted me, after all, and you've got a willing me from the future who shouldn't exist anyway!"

"What have you got to lose, Black?" the future Doctor asked the dark creature. "You even get to live! Consider this your punishment, and a betrayal of whoever referred to themselves as your allies!"

Black waved his arm aside and high in the air.

Amy, Rory, and River were free from his powerful force, and made a run for the TARDIS.

As they ran past their Doctor, the old hunched up Time Lord looked on at his future self, and hoped his own future wouldn't, like that of whom he stared back at now, wouldn't turn out so ugly. Then he looked away, and shut the doors to his ship after him.

The Doctor's future self turned back to Black, and suffered the end of his past eleventh life span.

The Doctor now aboard his TARDIS, and hanging out with his three best companions _EVER_, was having a moody.

"You two, I said I'd be having fun, not to you, but to me, that was my intention, so _how was the wedding?"_

"The _wedding?"_ Amy asked him.

"Yes," said the Doctor, setting coordinates, and setting the TARDIS in motion. _"Tell me about it! What was it like?"_

Amy didn't understand. All she thought that mattered was the here and now.

"I spent all the day thinking about you," she told him.

It made him feel guilty, but that didn't matter, because he had set the controls for Lead worth, following the wedding.

"Doctor, what's going on, where are we going?" Rory cut in.

River spoke for him.

"Back in time," she said, just as the TARDIS stopped.

"Step out those doors, Amy, Rory, River," demanded the Doctor. He wasn't ordered them, but he was being firm.

He followed them out, when as Amy had been ready to ask him something, she didn't, because she couldn't remember.

"I was going to say something then," said Amy.

"Yes, me too," added Rory.

"I remember," River whispered to the Doctor.

"You would," he replied, winking.

She zapped her electronic device on her arm, and before disappearing, said - "I'll see you very soon now!"

In a flash of white light, she was gone.

"The wedding was good, eh Rory," yelled Amy, from an ice-cream van.

Rory made a run towards her from the gate to his house. He grabbed his ice cream cone before it slipped from Amy's grip. Neither remembered the Doctor. They had forgotten all that happened in the last few hours, because to them, nothing had happened. And due to their time travelling escapades, there two months wait had but turned to one. Soon, they would be in the Doctors company again, for his very real death in the UTAH.

_And the mystery of the missing fifth envelope, pocketed by a mysterious figure in human form, continues…_

* * *

><p><strong>Coming Soon: The circle of truths<strong>

_Something is returning to do battle with the Doctor. They want to crush him, delight in his death, but nothing is as simple as the riddance of a Time Lord. _

_There are documents in which suggest that the last few invasions were mock ups for the real things, and that there are worse days to come. _

_The days to come are the days the Doctor fears most._


End file.
